it's not really clear to me what the author is getting at here. what does he dislike about summer camp? that adults instruct children? that younger children are supervised more closely than older...
it's not really clear to me what the author is getting at here. what does he dislike about summer camp? that adults instruct children? that younger children are supervised more closely than older ones? that it's not an egalitarian paradise? these all seem like pretty odd and innocuous things to be upset about.
a lot of this reads like "i was a rich kid, i went to rich kid camp, we did rich kid things, it was bad." i suppose you could make a valid argument that imposed hierarchy is bad, but i don't really see how that's an issue intrinsic or unique to summer camps.
Yeah I'm pretty confused here too. I went to summer camp every year from 11-18 and definitely think there are a lot of pros and cons to going and definitely don't think it is for everyone, but I...
Yeah I'm pretty confused here too. I went to summer camp every year from 11-18 and definitely think there are a lot of pros and cons to going and definitely don't think it is for everyone, but I was curious to hear what the article thought was bad about summer camp. I left the article unclear what the author thinks is bad about camp.
Kind of related: It feels like the author described their camp experience and expected it to be universal but like.... I've been a camper at a summer camp, a staffer at 2 different camps, a staff member at a place that hosted a "summer camp" (it was a day camp but still tried to play the same role as a summer camp), went to a high school band camp that went to a campground in the middle of nowhere without cell reception for a week, and was best friends with a lot of people who worked in summer camps across the country and I had really different experiences from the author. I was actually shocked by how not relatable the whole thing was.
In the end, all I can say I learned is that the author hates capitalism and how society functions, and since summer camps are a part of society they are also bad I guess.
Well I'll at least throw in that this is very representative of my experiences in several scout camps, though that doesn't seem to be what the author's experience is with. Granted, I'm likely more...
Well I'll at least throw in that this is very representative of my experiences in several scout camps, though that doesn't seem to be what the author's experience is with.
Granted, I'm likely more sensitive to many of the problems with these camps simply due to the fact that I didn't buy into the religious and nationalist messaging contained and I happened to be of the wrong gender to be there.
i was a boy scout and i'm a trans girl now so i definitely get where you're coming from there. :p but to be honest, scout camp is only one type of summer camp among many. i'm right there with you...
i was a boy scout and i'm a trans girl now so i definitely get where you're coming from there. :p but to be honest, scout camp is only one type of summer camp among many. i'm right there with you about the nationalist and religious themes, but that seems more like a criticism of boy scouts in general to me. i don't think the author's experiences are invalid, but it seems a bit extreme to project it onto the concept of summer camp as a whole.
I'm the one bringing in scouts, I think. The author's experience seems like it's with a generic self-organized summer camp. I'm not sure where you get that they're projecting it onto the concept...
I'm the one bringing in scouts, I think. The author's experience seems like it's with a generic self-organized summer camp.
I'm not sure where you get that they're projecting it onto the concept itself, though. It reads to me like it's targeting the standard summer camp through their own experiences, not that a camp that takes place during summer is necessarily bad. As they say:
A number of sleepaway camps geared toward LGBTQ youth have appeared in recent years, offering gender-inclusive cabins and sports. Specialist camps and minority-focused programs help foster a sense of community for kids who desperately need it. But that’s not camp’s legacy — if it were, the existence of those programs wouldn’t be noteworthy.
I think you are right and another time in another post I'd love to hear about your experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a Scout. I've had a lot of talks with my cousins (2...
I think you are right and another time in another post I'd love to hear about your experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a Scout. I've had a lot of talks with my cousins (2 straight, 1 gay) and some friends about gender and sexuality in scouting (I'd love to bring race into it but I can't seem to find any ex-scouts of color in the circles I run in :( ). However, for the sake of this post I think you are right that I need to separate "Boy Scouts" from "Camp", as I am falling into the same trap of generalizing my experiences of camps to all camps that I accuse the author of.
I suppose at that point I don't really have an argument either way then. As the author acknowledged, all the problems they point out with camp are also problems we see in schools, its just society requires kids to go to school and it is deemed the costs are outweighed by the benefits (getting an education) and that camp doesn't do that. I would disagree because I think Summer Camp (and I guess scouting in general) was one of the most impactful things in molding me into the person I am today (which is really funny because Boy Scouts is a generally conservative group and all the most die-hard scouts I know are the most progressive people I know) and was incredibly educating. But if Scout camp isn't a great model for a general camp, and if my experience was so vastly different from others, then I can't make a strong case FOR summer camp.
it also describes that example as an exception to the rule, though. the article is titled "the case against summer camps," not "the case against my summer camp," and although there's anecdotal...
it also describes that example as an exception to the rule, though. the article is titled "the case against summer camps," not "the case against my summer camp," and although there's anecdotal support in there, i think this chunk serves as a pretty good summary of the article:
Ultimately, summer camps exist to validate outmoded social structures among the most vulnerable age bracket. It’s not surprising that athletic preteen extroverts with good looks and excess friends shine in a camp setting — nor is it condemnable. But most of the things that make camp camp form a divisive feedback loop, funneling emotional resources to the kids who already enjoy their fill. It can be a hard chain to break. Picking captains for color wars, treating each cabin like a microsociety, commoditizing care packages — these traditions all conspire to allocate attention to the campers who get plenty of it the rest of the year, and alienate the ones who might not fit in.
and i just don't really agree that it's a fair assessment of summer camps. the fact that it seems to be based heavily on his apparently limited personal experience doesn't help but it's not the deal-breaker for me; it's more that the author seems to feel that summer camps exist to reinforce an outdated system of hierarchy, whereas my view is that it just happens to contain elements of those hierarchies because that's... how society operates, for better or worse. it seems weird to me that those criticisms are being leveled at summer camps specifically.
I think this is it for me. The author says these things about camp like they aren't true of like.... every group setting in society because the core problem the author has is with society. I feel...
it's more that the author seems to feel that summer camps exist to reinforce an outdated system of hierarchy, whereas my view is that it just happens to contain elements of those hierarchies because that's... how society operates, for better or worse.
I think this is it for me. The author says these things about camp like they aren't true of like.... every group setting in society because the core problem the author has is with society. I feel confident that I could re-write this article to be "the case against sports" or "the case against after-school groups" using the author's same arguments. The author doesn't like the way society operates (I agree, our society IS really shitty towards a lot of different groups. No argument here!) and then applies it to a thing they didn't enjoy because they didn't feel they got enough value out of it to justify going the way they can justify school.
My issue is that you're acting like "the overwhelming trend in summer camps is to be this way" and "summer camps are inherently like this" are the same things. They're arguing the former, but...
My issue is that you're acting like "the overwhelming trend in summer camps is to be this way" and "summer camps are inherently like this" are the same things. They're arguing the former, but you're treating them as if they're saying the latter, talking about the "concept of summer camp as a whole." By recognizing exceptions, they're saying that it's possible for them to be better, but that they just...aren't, generally speaking.
I won't argue about if you think this author's experience is representative of summer camps in general, though. It's not like I can just type in "percentage of summer camps that suck ass" and get that data :P
i just don't think it is the overwhelming trend, and i don't think the article really levels any non-anecdotal evidence that it is. as i said before, i can agree with you that scout camps are...
i just don't think it is the overwhelming trend, and i don't think the article really levels any non-anecdotal evidence that it is. as i said before, i can agree with you that scout camps are pretty bad, but that's because scouts is bad, and i don't think it's a summer camp thing. i think summer camps in general are good, and the article doesn't really do anything to challenge my view on that at all besides pointing out that it's subject to the same issues as pretty much everything else.
That's valid and specifically your experience is interesting for me because its incredibly different from my experiences as a bisexual anti-american atheist working at Boy Scout camps.
That's valid and specifically your experience is interesting for me because its incredibly different from my experiences as a bisexual anti-american atheist working at Boy Scout camps.
haha, yeah, i was a pretty frequent camper too. my experiences varied a bit and they weren't all positive, to be fair. for example one year i went to a christian summer camp and i did find that a...
haha, yeah, i was a pretty frequent camper too. my experiences varied a bit and they weren't all positive, to be fair. for example one year i went to a christian summer camp and i did find that a bit indoctrinating, but... it was a christian summer camp, so i don't really feel that was unusual, heh. but even that camp had its good aspects, and many of the other camps i spent time at were a blast, both as a camper and as a staffer. like you said, it can be a bit of a mixed bag, but i made a lot of good memories at camp in those years.
in general it really does feel like the author just had a bad personal experience and is extrapolating that onto summer camps as an abstract concept, which is kind of... contrived. the details about his upper class background really didn't help make it feel relatable either.
This paragraph had my key takeaway: That is, for 9 months of the year we send children somewhere that we recognize has an enormous impact on their growth and development, so we have standards for...
This paragraph had my key takeaway:
There is, of course, another institution kids pass through that’s resistant to change, frequently humiliating, economically stratified, and the cause of countless minor traumas: school. But school is so critical to children’s development that we regulate it stringently — we review and revise its curricula; we consider how it impacts a life before, during, and after attendance. Camps, on the other hand, are largely lawless. No national regulations exist. There is no standard to be applied. Whether a camp chooses to evolve its programs and provide more progressive spaces for kids is entirely within its discretion.
That is, for 9 months of the year we send children somewhere that we recognize has an enormous impact on their growth and development, so we have standards for what those schools have to teach. We have accreditation programs for teachers. We recognize that disparities in funding between wealthy and poor school districts can hugely affect the quality of the school.
Then, the other 3 months of the year, we as a society sorta shrug and say to parents "you're on your own". Wealthier parents are able to send their kids to a sleepaway camp, like the author describes his own experiences. Less wealthy parents might have to arrange to pay for daycare, have a relative watch the kids, etc.
If you take the anecdote the piece opens with, for example:
I was mock-kidnapped after lights out, driven to the edge of a forest, and told to kneel. The camp director emerged from the trees gripping a sword. He said some incantatory nonsense and knighted me, marking my induction into the camp’s most exclusive club: the Camper’s Council.
Can you imagine a similar process happening for the student government at a public school? Of course not. But a sort of "what happens at summer camp stays at summer camp" mentality means we take a different perspective on the same sort of thing there.
Also I don't agree that the author made a solid point in that quoted area now that I'm re-reading it. They say schools are "resistant to change, frequently humiliating, economically stratified,...
Also I don't agree that the author made a solid point in that quoted area now that I'm re-reading it. They say schools are "resistant to change, frequently humiliating, economically stratified, and the cause of countless minor traumas" (definitely underselling the traumas that happen at schools but we'll keep moving on giving ing them the benefit of the doubt) and then say "we review and revise its curricula; we consider how it impacts a life before, during, and after attendance." Uh, do we? Really? I don't think so. My best friend moved from Georgia and my partner moved from Texas to <state we all grew up in the north> and the way that they were taught about creationism in biology and the complete exclusion of racism and Jim Crow laws from their history curriculum tells me schools aren't forced to some standard to benefit their students. Also the author starts off by talking about all the emotional trauma and issues with camp and then as a counter-point talk about.... the curriculum? Like, learning algebra didn't make me want to kill myself less in school. AP History didn't take away any of the trauma of being bullied. How is "we revise the curriculum and think about economic advantages and disadvantages" a counter-point to any of the arguments the author has that camp is bad?
To get into my own experience a bit, I remember the initiation into the order of the arrow, where during a scary-ass (and pretty racist, given the abundance of white kids in redface) loud ceremony...
To get into my own experience a bit, I remember the initiation into the order of the arrow, where during a scary-ass (and pretty racist, given the abundance of white kids in redface) loud ceremony with drums beating and people howling you're suddenly ripped from your seat by a big shirtless dude, dragged in the middle of the crowd, and pulled away. Then you're made to sleep (in my case I was horrified, just being in a sleeping bag wide open next to a huge drop-off...and I couldn't move), and for the next two days (?, I don't remember the exact length) we could only eat small amounts of bread, couldn't speak, and had to do some kind of mind-numbing work like carrying shit around or digging holes or whatever.
It was something that loomed over you every year beforehand, like you're next. I don't mean to be dramatic or characterize this as abusive, I was fine and I'm sure if there was a chance of me being actually hurt then I would be taken care of, but it was scary and mean-spirited in a way that we generally don't do in other places. This was far from the worst thing about camp, but it's such an up-front and formalized event that it's very obvious to see why it's shit and how to change it. It's not like the actual worst things, which mostly fell under the umbrella of toxic masculinity, where the problems are hard, deeply engrained, and would require very long-term solutions. It's easy, but we don't even think of making the easy to solve things better. No one gives a shit.
I don't really have a point for mentioning this except that I agree that we generally try to have standards for things like school, even with how often they slip through and are hellholes anyway, but strangely don't have a second thought about summer camp. I can say knowing my parents that they would've been pissed off if this happened to me for something school-related, but because it was camp and I got a fancy sash and title for it, it was something to be proud of. It's a weird disconnect.
Keeping it purposely vague...around a decade ago? I'm pretty young, though for all I know it's a bit different now with how the BSA has been trying to work on its image.
Keeping it purposely vague...around a decade ago? I'm pretty young, though for all I know it's a bit different now with how the BSA has been trying to work on its image.
Their problems to me seem like a few things: Camps often prop up class divisions (hence the author's many mentions of networks, it's like these camps are baby's first old boys' club), humiliate...
Their problems to me seem like a few things: Camps often prop up class divisions (hence the author's many mentions of networks, it's like these camps are baby's first old boys' club), humiliate children, beat in an outdated image of masculinity, promote nationalism, generally reinforce existing hierarchies, and employ a rigid structure meant to mimic the military (very explicit if we're talking scout camps, the BSA is literally a military pipeline) to "de-pussify" children. They hold all of that up through their own tradition (which seems almost mythical in the eyes of a child) and lack of examination from the rest of the world, unlike schooling which we constantly are at least trying to make better.
The article lists examples of the author's own experience and of the stated goals of summer camps to make the point that they uphold these things. I don't know what you want, really. Should they go on to argue why these things are bad? Maybe for a certain audience, but I think it's enough to point these things out. Summer camps are often seen by parents who would otherwise oppose these things as a neutral occupier of time or a good place for children to get to exercise control over themselves. A harmless place to get a taste of freedom. For that audience, I think challenging that image is useful and that explaining why these effects are bad would just be a waste of time.
It all seems a lot like a diet old boys' club, which I imagine is a whole lot worse in a place stuffed with rich kids like what the article describes with their council.
i suppose you could make a valid argument that imposed hierarchy is bad, but i don't really see how that's an issue intrinsic or unique to summer camps.
Does it have to be intrinsic or unique? What if it's just extremely common? Why does the fact that it could be better—that these flaws are not inherently part of what a summer camp is—or the that other things have similar flaws invalidate their point?
this is true of boy scout camp and utterly untrue of any other camp i have ever gone to. and of course it's true of boy scout camp... that's half the point of boy scouts (so again, this seems like...
Camps often prop up class divisions (hence the author's many mentions of networks, it's like these camps are baby's first old boys' club), humiliate children, beat in an outdated image of masculinity, promote nationalism, generally reinforce existing hierarchies, and employ a rigid structure meant to mimic the military (very explicit if we're talking scout camps, the BSA is literally a military pipeline) to "de-pussify" children.
this is true of boy scout camp and utterly untrue of any other camp i have ever gone to. and of course it's true of boy scout camp... that's half the point of boy scouts (so again, this seems like a criticism of boy scouts, not summer camp). not that my experience is the be-all end-all here, but there are lots and lots of camps that do not behave this way... possibly even the majority of non-scout camps. ultimately the point of many of them is just to have a place to send your children for the summer where you can rest assured that they're taken care of and have fun things to do. and many of them do exactly that. i don't think it's fair to say that the nationalist, hierarchical qualities of the boy scouts accurately reflect summer camps as a whole.
Does it have to be intrinsic or unique? What if it's just extremely common? Why do the fact that it could be better—that these flaws are not inherently part of what a summer camp is—or the that other things have similar flaws invalidate their point?
i mean, no, but it's an editorial about how summer camps are bad, and the way it supports this is either anecdotal or true of pretty much any self-governing group of humans. it's fair to speak out against these kinds of inequalities but i don't see how decrying a conceptually inoffensive institution is really a good or useful means of doing that just because, sure, summer camps emulate and are affected by the society under which they exist. this seems like pretty common sense and i'm not sure why it's really necessary to tear summer camps down because sometimes they're bad in an extremely ubiquitous way. i would say that the fact that the flaws are not inherently part of the summer camp experience is pretty much the best possible reason why the message that summer camps are necessarily bad because of these flaws is invalid.
i guess in general i just don't feel like "summer camps are bad because they are not immune from the trappings of society" is a very good or constructive standpoint, or even a necessarily true one.
How can these things be "utterly untrue" of any (or most) non-boy scout camp but be "true of pretty much any self-governing group of humans"? I'm not sure how to respond if you're claiming both...
How can these things be "utterly untrue" of any (or most) non-boy scout camp but be "true of pretty much any self-governing group of humans"? I'm not sure how to respond if you're claiming both that this is the result of a specific organization while not true of others while also saying that it's just a natural reflection of society.
It should also be repeated that I'm pretty sure the author isn't talking about a scout camp. They don't mention anything scout-specific or criticize the BSA, which seems like a strange exclusion if that's what they are talking about.
you seem to be confusing the two different topics i'm addressing here. i don't like boy scout camp, but the reasons for that are not the same as the reasons the author is citing for disliking...
you seem to be confusing the two different topics i'm addressing here. i don't like boy scout camp, but the reasons for that are not the same as the reasons the author is citing for disliking summer camp (... because he's not talking about boy scout camp either), and they're not reasons that are necessarily applicable to other camps.
all i'm saying with regard to boy scout camps is that they are bad, but that's because their nationalist and religious aspects, as well as their arbitrary but enforced rank-based hierarchy. the author complains about the hierarchies that grow out of ordinary summer camps, too, but i don't really think those are really remotely comparable to the boy scouts analogue. it's two different things. i have never heard of a non-boy scout camp that "humiliates children" and "employs a rigid structure meant to mimic the military." the thought of that is mildly absurd.
so yeah, idk, i think some degree of stratification— often unfair— is going to grow out of any sustained group of people. that's not the same as the rank structure the boy scouts is built on. and while it's unideal, i still find it kind of odd that it's being leveled as a criticism against summer camps specifically, seeing as it's a wider societal issue that's mostly incidental to summer camp.
i know that the author doesn't mention the bsa, but i'm talking about boy scouts in the first place because you cited it as the basis upon which you're forming your own opinion. i'm excluding it because, while i agree it's bad, it's not a summer camp thing, it's a boy scouts thing. while the negative experiences the author had are vaguely related, it's not really the same thing at all.
The humiliation is something I've seen in other non-scout camps (albeit not proper summer camps) plenty. It's like a magnified version of everything that's wrong with sports teams and such. That's...
The humiliation is something I've seen in other non-scout camps (albeit not proper summer camps) plenty. It's like a magnified version of everything that's wrong with sports teams and such. That's how I feel about most of this issue. In my eyes, camps don't just tend to reflect problems with society at large, they focus and amplify them. Similarly, the super rigid and uniform scheduling and behavior which I meant by the military comparison is also something I've seen elsewhere, though admittedly less extreme than in scouts. I also recognize that in my case, location may play a big part. The rural upper midwest isn't known for its progressive values.
It's hard to discuss this much, since I don't know what kind of data would actual be useful here and anecdotes are already at a dead end, so I'll probably leave it at that.
I was reminded of a semi-similar piece from Jason Kottke a few months back about his feelings about sending his kids to camp. My takeaway from the Vox author's perspective is that camp is...
I was reminded of a semi-similar piece from Jason Kottke a few months back about his feelings about sending his kids to camp.
My takeaway from the Vox author's perspective is that camp is old-fashioned, classist, and only amounts to what you make of the experience. Kottke's perspective, although as a parent and not an attendee, seems to be more hopeful of the experience.
Kottke's summary of the camp values draws a stark contrast to the Vox piece too:
That there are many ways to be a man, that masculinity can be toxic, that vulnerability is strength…hearing these ideas more often would have benefited an adolescent Jason, a shy and sometimes bullied small-town kid who didn’t feel like he belonged, truly belonged, anywhere until he went off to college and discovered that the world was full of weirdos just like, and also very unlike, himself. I still feel that little kid’s pain, and it makes me very happy that my kids are lucky enough to spend significant time in a place where those ideas take center stage.
I would have loved that camp experience as a kid. Seems like many people commenting here would too.
it's not really clear to me what the author is getting at here. what does he dislike about summer camp? that adults instruct children? that younger children are supervised more closely than older ones? that it's not an egalitarian paradise? these all seem like pretty odd and innocuous things to be upset about.
a lot of this reads like "i was a rich kid, i went to rich kid camp, we did rich kid things, it was bad." i suppose you could make a valid argument that imposed hierarchy is bad, but i don't really see how that's an issue intrinsic or unique to summer camps.
Yeah I'm pretty confused here too. I went to summer camp every year from 11-18 and definitely think there are a lot of pros and cons to going and definitely don't think it is for everyone, but I was curious to hear what the article thought was bad about summer camp. I left the article unclear what the author thinks is bad about camp.
Kind of related: It feels like the author described their camp experience and expected it to be universal but like.... I've been a camper at a summer camp, a staffer at 2 different camps, a staff member at a place that hosted a "summer camp" (it was a day camp but still tried to play the same role as a summer camp), went to a high school band camp that went to a campground in the middle of nowhere without cell reception for a week, and was best friends with a lot of people who worked in summer camps across the country and I had really different experiences from the author. I was actually shocked by how not relatable the whole thing was.
In the end, all I can say I learned is that the author hates capitalism and how society functions, and since summer camps are a part of society they are also bad I guess.
Well I'll at least throw in that this is very representative of my experiences in several scout camps, though that doesn't seem to be what the author's experience is with.
Granted, I'm likely more sensitive to many of the problems with these camps simply due to the fact that I didn't buy into the religious and nationalist messaging contained and I happened to be of the wrong gender to be there.
i was a boy scout and i'm a trans girl now so i definitely get where you're coming from there. :p but to be honest, scout camp is only one type of summer camp among many. i'm right there with you about the nationalist and religious themes, but that seems more like a criticism of boy scouts in general to me. i don't think the author's experiences are invalid, but it seems a bit extreme to project it onto the concept of summer camp as a whole.
I'm the one bringing in scouts, I think. The author's experience seems like it's with a generic self-organized summer camp.
I'm not sure where you get that they're projecting it onto the concept itself, though. It reads to me like it's targeting the standard summer camp through their own experiences, not that a camp that takes place during summer is necessarily bad. As they say:
I think you are right and another time in another post I'd love to hear about your experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a Scout. I've had a lot of talks with my cousins (2 straight, 1 gay) and some friends about gender and sexuality in scouting (I'd love to bring race into it but I can't seem to find any ex-scouts of color in the circles I run in :( ). However, for the sake of this post I think you are right that I need to separate "Boy Scouts" from "Camp", as I am falling into the same trap of generalizing my experiences of camps to all camps that I accuse the author of.
I suppose at that point I don't really have an argument either way then. As the author acknowledged, all the problems they point out with camp are also problems we see in schools, its just society requires kids to go to school and it is deemed the costs are outweighed by the benefits (getting an education) and that camp doesn't do that. I would disagree because I think Summer Camp (and I guess scouting in general) was one of the most impactful things in molding me into the person I am today (which is really funny because Boy Scouts is a generally conservative group and all the most die-hard scouts I know are the most progressive people I know) and was incredibly educating. But if Scout camp isn't a great model for a general camp, and if my experience was so vastly different from others, then I can't make a strong case FOR summer camp.
it also describes that example as an exception to the rule, though. the article is titled "the case against summer camps," not "the case against my summer camp," and although there's anecdotal support in there, i think this chunk serves as a pretty good summary of the article:
and i just don't really agree that it's a fair assessment of summer camps. the fact that it seems to be based heavily on his apparently limited personal experience doesn't help but it's not the deal-breaker for me; it's more that the author seems to feel that summer camps exist to reinforce an outdated system of hierarchy, whereas my view is that it just happens to contain elements of those hierarchies because that's... how society operates, for better or worse. it seems weird to me that those criticisms are being leveled at summer camps specifically.
I think this is it for me. The author says these things about camp like they aren't true of like.... every group setting in society because the core problem the author has is with society. I feel confident that I could re-write this article to be "the case against sports" or "the case against after-school groups" using the author's same arguments. The author doesn't like the way society operates (I agree, our society IS really shitty towards a lot of different groups. No argument here!) and then applies it to a thing they didn't enjoy because they didn't feel they got enough value out of it to justify going the way they can justify school.
My issue is that you're acting like "the overwhelming trend in summer camps is to be this way" and "summer camps are inherently like this" are the same things. They're arguing the former, but you're treating them as if they're saying the latter, talking about the "concept of summer camp as a whole." By recognizing exceptions, they're saying that it's possible for them to be better, but that they just...aren't, generally speaking.
I won't argue about if you think this author's experience is representative of summer camps in general, though. It's not like I can just type in "percentage of summer camps that suck ass" and get that data :P
i just don't think it is the overwhelming trend, and i don't think the article really levels any non-anecdotal evidence that it is. as i said before, i can agree with you that scout camps are pretty bad, but that's because scouts is bad, and i don't think it's a summer camp thing. i think summer camps in general are good, and the article doesn't really do anything to challenge my view on that at all besides pointing out that it's subject to the same issues as pretty much everything else.
That's valid and specifically your experience is interesting for me because its incredibly different from my experiences as a bisexual anti-american atheist working at Boy Scout camps.
haha, yeah, i was a pretty frequent camper too. my experiences varied a bit and they weren't all positive, to be fair. for example one year i went to a christian summer camp and i did find that a bit indoctrinating, but... it was a christian summer camp, so i don't really feel that was unusual, heh. but even that camp had its good aspects, and many of the other camps i spent time at were a blast, both as a camper and as a staffer. like you said, it can be a bit of a mixed bag, but i made a lot of good memories at camp in those years.
in general it really does feel like the author just had a bad personal experience and is extrapolating that onto summer camps as an abstract concept, which is kind of... contrived. the details about his upper class background really didn't help make it feel relatable either.
This paragraph had my key takeaway:
That is, for 9 months of the year we send children somewhere that we recognize has an enormous impact on their growth and development, so we have standards for what those schools have to teach. We have accreditation programs for teachers. We recognize that disparities in funding between wealthy and poor school districts can hugely affect the quality of the school.
Then, the other 3 months of the year, we as a society sorta shrug and say to parents "you're on your own". Wealthier parents are able to send their kids to a sleepaway camp, like the author describes his own experiences. Less wealthy parents might have to arrange to pay for daycare, have a relative watch the kids, etc.
If you take the anecdote the piece opens with, for example:
Can you imagine a similar process happening for the student government at a public school? Of course not. But a sort of "what happens at summer camp stays at summer camp" mentality means we take a different perspective on the same sort of thing there.
Also I don't agree that the author made a solid point in that quoted area now that I'm re-reading it. They say schools are "resistant to change, frequently humiliating, economically stratified, and the cause of countless minor traumas" (definitely underselling the traumas that happen at schools but we'll keep moving on giving ing them the benefit of the doubt) and then say "we review and revise its curricula; we consider how it impacts a life before, during, and after attendance." Uh, do we? Really? I don't think so. My best friend moved from Georgia and my partner moved from Texas to <state we all grew up in the north> and the way that they were taught about creationism in biology and the complete exclusion of racism and Jim Crow laws from their history curriculum tells me schools aren't forced to some standard to benefit their students. Also the author starts off by talking about all the emotional trauma and issues with camp and then as a counter-point talk about.... the curriculum? Like, learning algebra didn't make me want to kill myself less in school. AP History didn't take away any of the trauma of being bullied. How is "we revise the curriculum and think about economic advantages and disadvantages" a counter-point to any of the arguments the author has that camp is bad?
Student government? Not at my school but maybe. Other school-run groups. 10000000000% yes, because I experienced them.
To get into my own experience a bit, I remember the initiation into the order of the arrow, where during a scary-ass (and pretty racist, given the abundance of white kids in redface) loud ceremony with drums beating and people howling you're suddenly ripped from your seat by a big shirtless dude, dragged in the middle of the crowd, and pulled away. Then you're made to sleep (in my case I was horrified, just being in a sleeping bag wide open next to a huge drop-off...and I couldn't move), and for the next two days (?, I don't remember the exact length) we could only eat small amounts of bread, couldn't speak, and had to do some kind of mind-numbing work like carrying shit around or digging holes or whatever.
It was something that loomed over you every year beforehand, like you're next. I don't mean to be dramatic or characterize this as abusive, I was fine and I'm sure if there was a chance of me being actually hurt then I would be taken care of, but it was scary and mean-spirited in a way that we generally don't do in other places. This was far from the worst thing about camp, but it's such an up-front and formalized event that it's very obvious to see why it's shit and how to change it. It's not like the actual worst things, which mostly fell under the umbrella of toxic masculinity, where the problems are hard, deeply engrained, and would require very long-term solutions. It's easy, but we don't even think of making the easy to solve things better. No one gives a shit.
I don't really have a point for mentioning this except that I agree that we generally try to have standards for things like school, even with how often they slip through and are hellholes anyway, but strangely don't have a second thought about summer camp. I can say knowing my parents that they would've been pissed off if this happened to me for something school-related, but because it was camp and I got a fancy sash and title for it, it was something to be proud of. It's a weird disconnect.
Can I ask when you did your OA ordeal? If you don't want to say that is completely understandable.
Keeping it purposely vague...around a decade ago? I'm pretty young, though for all I know it's a bit different now with how the BSA has been trying to work on its image.
Their problems to me seem like a few things: Camps often prop up class divisions (hence the author's many mentions of networks, it's like these camps are baby's first old boys' club), humiliate children, beat in an outdated image of masculinity, promote nationalism, generally reinforce existing hierarchies, and employ a rigid structure meant to mimic the military (very explicit if we're talking scout camps, the BSA is literally a military pipeline) to "de-pussify" children. They hold all of that up through their own tradition (which seems almost mythical in the eyes of a child) and lack of examination from the rest of the world, unlike schooling which we constantly are at least trying to make better.
The article lists examples of the author's own experience and of the stated goals of summer camps to make the point that they uphold these things. I don't know what you want, really. Should they go on to argue why these things are bad? Maybe for a certain audience, but I think it's enough to point these things out. Summer camps are often seen by parents who would otherwise oppose these things as a neutral occupier of time or a good place for children to get to exercise control over themselves. A harmless place to get a taste of freedom. For that audience, I think challenging that image is useful and that explaining why these effects are bad would just be a waste of time.
It all seems a lot like a diet old boys' club, which I imagine is a whole lot worse in a place stuffed with rich kids like what the article describes with their council.
Does it have to be intrinsic or unique? What if it's just extremely common? Why does the fact that it could be better—that these flaws are not inherently part of what a summer camp is—or the that other things have similar flaws invalidate their point?
this is true of boy scout camp and utterly untrue of any other camp i have ever gone to. and of course it's true of boy scout camp... that's half the point of boy scouts (so again, this seems like a criticism of boy scouts, not summer camp). not that my experience is the be-all end-all here, but there are lots and lots of camps that do not behave this way... possibly even the majority of non-scout camps. ultimately the point of many of them is just to have a place to send your children for the summer where you can rest assured that they're taken care of and have fun things to do. and many of them do exactly that. i don't think it's fair to say that the nationalist, hierarchical qualities of the boy scouts accurately reflect summer camps as a whole.
i mean, no, but it's an editorial about how summer camps are bad, and the way it supports this is either anecdotal or true of pretty much any self-governing group of humans. it's fair to speak out against these kinds of inequalities but i don't see how decrying a conceptually inoffensive institution is really a good or useful means of doing that just because, sure, summer camps emulate and are affected by the society under which they exist. this seems like pretty common sense and i'm not sure why it's really necessary to tear summer camps down because sometimes they're bad in an extremely ubiquitous way. i would say that the fact that the flaws are not inherently part of the summer camp experience is pretty much the best possible reason why the message that summer camps are necessarily bad because of these flaws is invalid.
i guess in general i just don't feel like "summer camps are bad because they are not immune from the trappings of society" is a very good or constructive standpoint, or even a necessarily true one.
How can these things be "utterly untrue" of any (or most) non-boy scout camp but be "true of pretty much any self-governing group of humans"? I'm not sure how to respond if you're claiming both that this is the result of a specific organization while not true of others while also saying that it's just a natural reflection of society.
It should also be repeated that I'm pretty sure the author isn't talking about a scout camp. They don't mention anything scout-specific or criticize the BSA, which seems like a strange exclusion if that's what they are talking about.
you seem to be confusing the two different topics i'm addressing here. i don't like boy scout camp, but the reasons for that are not the same as the reasons the author is citing for disliking summer camp (... because he's not talking about boy scout camp either), and they're not reasons that are necessarily applicable to other camps.
all i'm saying with regard to boy scout camps is that they are bad, but that's because their nationalist and religious aspects, as well as their arbitrary but enforced rank-based hierarchy. the author complains about the hierarchies that grow out of ordinary summer camps, too, but i don't really think those are really remotely comparable to the boy scouts analogue. it's two different things. i have never heard of a non-boy scout camp that "humiliates children" and "employs a rigid structure meant to mimic the military." the thought of that is mildly absurd.
so yeah, idk, i think some degree of stratification— often unfair— is going to grow out of any sustained group of people. that's not the same as the rank structure the boy scouts is built on. and while it's unideal, i still find it kind of odd that it's being leveled as a criticism against summer camps specifically, seeing as it's a wider societal issue that's mostly incidental to summer camp.
i know that the author doesn't mention the bsa, but i'm talking about boy scouts in the first place because you cited it as the basis upon which you're forming your own opinion. i'm excluding it because, while i agree it's bad, it's not a summer camp thing, it's a boy scouts thing. while the negative experiences the author had are vaguely related, it's not really the same thing at all.
The humiliation is something I've seen in other non-scout camps (albeit not proper summer camps) plenty. It's like a magnified version of everything that's wrong with sports teams and such. That's how I feel about most of this issue. In my eyes, camps don't just tend to reflect problems with society at large, they focus and amplify them. Similarly, the super rigid and uniform scheduling and behavior which I meant by the military comparison is also something I've seen elsewhere, though admittedly less extreme than in scouts. I also recognize that in my case, location may play a big part. The rural upper midwest isn't known for its progressive values.
It's hard to discuss this much, since I don't know what kind of data would actual be useful here and anecdotes are already at a dead end, so I'll probably leave it at that.
I was reminded of a semi-similar piece from Jason Kottke a few months back about his feelings about sending his kids to camp.
My takeaway from the Vox author's perspective is that camp is old-fashioned, classist, and only amounts to what you make of the experience. Kottke's perspective, although as a parent and not an attendee, seems to be more hopeful of the experience.
Kottke's summary of the camp values draws a stark contrast to the Vox piece too:
I would have loved that camp experience as a kid. Seems like many people commenting here would too.